Bowe Bergdahl's release: a not-so-happy ending for Obama?

US correspondent for Fairfax Media

A video released by the Taliban in 2010 containing footage of Bowe Bergdahl. Photo: AP

Washington: Normally there is not a happier story. An American soldier held by enemy combatants for half a decade walks free. But the circumstances of the release and recovery of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl is now at the centre of an increasingly vicious controversy.

Sergeant Bergdahl’s release by his Taliban captors in exchange for five high-level Taliban held in US detention in Guantanamo Bay has prompted disquiet over the notion of “setting a price” on American troops in the field.

This has been exacerbated by the publication of allegations that Sergeant Bergdahl was not worthy of the effort to recover him.

US soldier Bowe Bergdahl in captivity. Photo: AFP

On Monday the Daily Beast published a first-person piece by Nathan Bradley Bethea, a journalist who once served in Sergeant Bergdahl’s unit, the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment.

Advertisement

“After we redeployed, every member of my brigade combat team received an order that we were not allowed to discuss what happened to Bergdahl for fear of endangering him,” he writes. “He is safe, and now it is time to speak the truth.

“And that the truth is: Bergdahl was a deserter, and soldiers from his own unit died trying to track him down.”

According to Bethea, Sergeant Bergdahl’s unit was manning a fragile forward operating base when he disappeared after pulling guard duty one night.

“The soldiers in 2nd Platoon, Blackfoot Company discovered his rifle, helmet, body armour and web gear in a neat stack. He had, however, taken his compass. His fellow soldiers later mentioned his stated desire to walk from Afghanistan to India,” he writes.

Early reports held that Sergeant Bergdahl, then a private, was captured after falling behind on a patrol, though Bethea claims to know this is not true.

He describes daily dangerous search missions for Bergdahl being conducted across the theatre of operations in Afghanistan leading to several deaths.

“I believe that Bergdahl also deserves sympathy, but he has much to answer for, some of which is far more damning than simply having walked off,” Bethea writes.

Bowe’s emails to his parents confirmed that he was disillusioned with America’s prosecution of the war in Afghanistan.

In one message made public he laments what he viewed as the arrogance of American troops and describes the horror of seeing a child run down by a US military vehicle.

“I am sorry for everything,” he wrote. “The horror that is America is disgusting.”

So far the Department of Defence has not yet said how it believes Bergdahl fell into enemy hands. On Sunday the Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel said Bergdahl’s release was secured when a window of opportunity opened after years of effort.

“We believed that the information we had, the intelligence we had, was such that Sergeant Bergdahl's safety and health were both in jeopardy, and in particular his health deteriorating,” he said in a press briefing.

He spoke after the President, Barack Obama, appeared in the White House Rose Garden with Bergdahl’s parents to announce their son’s rescue. The appearance came the very same week the President detailed how America would reduce its forces in Afghanistan to just under 10,000 this year before winding down to a normal diplomatic presence in 2016.

Now, even as Bergdahl continues his treatment at a US medical facility in Germany and his parents celebrate his release, the issue has become ensnared in Washington DC’s scandal machine.

Late on Monday Fox News reported unnamed Defence sources said, “many within the intelligence community harbour serious outstanding concerns not only that Bergdahl may have been a deserter but that he may have been an active collaborator with the enemy.”

Senior Republicans on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees have now called for hearings to investigate whether President Barack Obama broke the law in releasing the five Taliban detainees without notifying Congress, whether they might return to battle and if the release might encourage further abductions of American personnel.

"The five terrorists released were the hardest of the hard-core," wrote Republican Senator Lindsay Graham in a letter calling for a hearing.

"They have American blood on their hands and surely as night follows day they will return to the fight. In effect, we released the 'Taliban Dream Team'. The United States is less safe because of these actions."

The Tea Party-backed Senator Ted Cruz thundered, "What does this tell terrorists, that if you capture a US soldier, you can trade that soldier for five terrorists we've gone after?... The reason why the US has had the policy for decades of not negotiating with terrorists is because once you start doing it, every other terrorist has an incentive to capture more soldiers."

Some conservative commentators believe President Obama, having been prevented by Congress from closing down the prison at Guantanamo Bay since his election, is now seeking to do so by stealth.

But more sympathetic viewers have argued that the US has been transparent about its efforts to begin talks with the Taliban for years and exchanging prisoners taken on the field of battle is not the same as negotiating for the release of abducted civilians.

With sources close to outgoing Afghan President Hamid Karzai saying that he too has been angered by a deal concluded behind his back, US ambassador to Afghanistan James Cunningham said the Afghan government had been made aware of the impending swap.

"It's not behind the government's back. The government's known that we're trying to [do] this for a long time, and they agreed to it and they supported it," he said.

"The only thing that was not transparent to anybody was the actual timing - the fact that there was an agreement and the timing. It certainly doesn't undermine the [Afghan] government and they never expressed any concern to us that it would undermine the government."